Storage and communication of digital video information is useful in a variety of video devices, such as video recorders, set-top boxes, DVD players, and the like. Because uncompressed video information can demand a large amount of bandwidth, video information is typically compressed at an encoder device prior to storage or communication, and decompressed at a decoder device for rendering and display. The specific format employed to compress and decompress the video information is referred to as a codec. In order to enhance the flexibility of a video device, it is frequently desirable a video processing device be able to encode or decode video information based on a variety of codecs. Accordingly, the video processing device can include a number of dedicated hardware modules, whereby each dedicated hardware module is designed to encode or decode received video information according to a corresponding codec. However, such dedicated hardware modules can consume an undesirable amount of circuit area and other resources.